Evolution
by paperwingsandbrokenlegs
Summary: just a little drabble about the team and social order. disclaimer: don't own anything. everything belongs to robert rodriguez and his team. just playing with his toys.
1. Casey

_hi all!_

_Just rewatched the Faculty and rekindled my love of all things Zeke, so here is a short fic attempting to make some sense of social order but which in reality is little more than an excuse to worship the awesome-ness of he who drives the GTO. _

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Status in school is not permanent state of being, but an ever-evolving series of triumphs and setbacks. Sure, most people never make it to the top, but most claw their way upwards or crash and burn slowly.

In fact, the evolution of the typical student can be charted by members of their little breakfast club. Most people begin school life as a Casey; pathetic, small and afraid of their own shadow. Sure, not everybody gets picked on everyday without fail, but the general idea remains true. Casey does most of his homework, and studying is the focal point of his life at the moment but it is not everything. He's one of those students whom teachers don't generally remember despite close co-operation on extra-curricular activities simply because the results of intervention are a hair's breadth of difference of neglect – he will get into college with or without their help. Nurse Harper has been charged with making sure he is not irreparably maimed or otherwise killed, and she might be the one person who won't forget his existence the year he leaves school. His social life is one of reciprocity; he's nice to peers who don't beat the crap out of him, and mouthy to those who do. He's pitied but shunned, since lame-ness is contagious and as long as the person being racked into the flagpole is not them, nobody feels too sorry for him.

One rung up the chain is Stokely. After initially being a Casey-type, the typical student changes into a Stokely; bristly, all teeth and claws and attitude. Pick a fight with her, and you won't escape without serious damage. While she still does a relatively fair portion of her homework, Stokes does not care what the teachers/parents/authority figures think of her because she's learnt that they do not give a crap about her. They wilfully close their eyes to her pain, and so are undeserving of her respect. Nevertheless, her utmost hatred is reserved for her peers; those pretentious dickwads who run around in little cliques because they do not have the guts to buck the stereotypes for fear of being ostracised. She recognises, though, that her little rebellion is just a different manifestation of the same fear; she's not bucking stereotypes herself, merely removing herself from the game. It's a coward's approach and Stokes knows it, but it is infinitely preferable to their existence. Yet, when she sees a couple of girls giggling together over a girlie mag or a boy shyly reach out for his girlfriend's hand, she wonders if missing out is really all that worth it.

At the apex of the social ladder is Delilah. It is erroneous to attribute this merely to her position as head cheerleader, though it is a large part of it. No, Delilah got here because of a combination of resourcefulness, street-smarts and book-smarts. Having seen the artificiality of it all through the eyes of a Stokely, she's one-upped the system by using it to her advantage. She's given up the little ember of hope for true friendship that both Casey and Stokely try so very hard to conceal. Her number one rule is this; trust no one. Every move Delilah makes is in furtherance of her own interests – both students and teachers love her, and as long as no one has the audacity to say it to her face, she does not care that everyone thinks she's a Grade-A bitch. She knows she is; she's worked hard to become one.

Less common is the Marybeth; the perpetually chipper, optimistic, well-adjusted specimen only slightly higher than Casey on the social ladder. She is the result of loving parents and a bubble environment of non-competition. Where there is nothing to fight for; no advantage in being the smartest or prettiest or whatever, people just do not bother to. Thrown into a competitive environment, they attempt to cling to their sunshine attitude until the realities of life make them cut their wrists or, you know, turn into an alien queen intent on taking over the world.

If the Marybeth is to survive, she turns into a Stan. Blessed with supportive parents and an optimistic attitude, they might survive in situations that do not call for intense intellectual exercise; the football pitch being one of them. Once a Stan gains some modicum of success, he longs to quit the fight and go back to the sunshine state of the Marybeth; this longing normally manifests in attempted rebellion. These attempts at rebellion are nothing like the radical actions taken by Stokely, since Stan is not a victim of the system and at any rate cannot muster the anger to properly isolate themselves from the chain. Despite the simmering discontentment, Stan will always find a way back into the system when he is tired of trying to bend it to his will, and it will accept him with open arms. He spends his existence in a limbo between these states of acceptance and disdain, neither of which are particularly strong emotions. It is precisely this lack of passion, and the lack of a threat presented by him, that allows him to climb to such heights within the system; he is truly its bitch.

Casey is aware of all this, and his own previously lowly position, from his new vantage point as hero; while he will never fall to the position of the runt again, his newfound position as hero of Herrington High bring with it new minefields to avoid. That is okay though, he thinks, for it is time for him to evolve.

There is just one thing that bugs him. Zeke. Try as he might, Casey cannot figure out where Zeke belongs on the social ladder of high school. He's definitely one of the predators at the apex, but where exactly? He does not wield the influence or popularity of Delilah, but the thought of the cheerleader-editor being superior to the drug-dealing, teacher-scaring prince of darkness is somehow wrong. Zeke strikes out at authority in ways that even Stokely cannot contemplate, but instead of being shunned and jeered at, he is awed. Perhaps the difference is that everyone has the potential to be a Stokely, but being Zeke requires a calculated desire to be the cause of one's own destruction. There is something inherently wrong about Zeke; that he scares and invalidates the teachers with his intellect, but is disturbed by the mere word 'bastard'. That he stabbed one teacher in the eye with a pen and shot another, but is genuinely upset when people with whom he would not have exchanged two words in a year are turned. So, yeah, Zeke does not fit into the social ladder; he seems to exist in spite of it, using it to his advantage but paying no toll. He plays students, parents and teachers like a deck of cards, and there is not a single person who can tell you why Zeke does A instead of B.

The paradox that he presents bugs Casey when they sit at the lunch table together, all of them, because you do not fight an alien invasion without becoming compatriots at some level. He sits there with them, cigarette hanging loosely between long, graceful fingers, head cocked and eyes half-lidded like the conversation is too bland for his taste. He is the alien here; the only one who did not in any way have his mind infiltrated by the aquatic parasites. Sometimes Casey wonders what Marybeth might have offered Zeke to win his allegiance, if such a thing were even possible; wishes for a while that he had mind-reading powers if only to get a glimpse into the older boy's thought process. Sometimes Casey wonders if maybe, just maybe, he was the loneliest of them all.

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Do review. It'll make my day, that it will.


	2. Zeke

_This was meant to be a one-shot, but what the heck? _

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They're sitting around the lunch table, hanging out like they always do _after_. They don't have much in common, but there's something about being in the company of the last resistance that draws them together. They get it; the sense of disbelief, the fear of being taken over, the desperate fight not to lose that saw him shoot a teacher in the head. They get it.

But he doesn't, not entirely. He's the only one who hasn't had Marybeth stick her fingers in his head and, as much as he's thankful she didn't, sometimes he feels like he missed the bus.

They've all changed. Casey has grown so much, handling fame and infamy with surprising grace. He's always had it in him, Zeke knows. He's seen him slink into the bathroom many times, bleeding from wounds inflicted by the football team, but he never looked defeated. He's heard him mouth off to them time and again, despite the dire consequences. Kid had fight. The invasion was just the catalyst he needed to realise it himself and kick into gear.

And look at him now. He's on the cover of the Times. He can make life miserable for those jocks, what with the things his all-seeing camera must have captured. He once took Zeke into his bedroom and showed him the boxes and boxes and boxes of photos he's taken and he's still amazed at how intimate some of them are. There's one of him, amongst others, leaning against his car and staring into the kindergarten on open day. The sun is behind him and it creates a sort of halo around him, drawing attention to his haunted eyes; his shadowed figure contrasts beautifully with the well-lit, joyous children running around in the background. He never noticed Casey's presence, much less realised that he was being photographed.

It's that ability of his that led him to notice that something was off before anyone else, and it's still there now in the way he expertly deflects prying questions from journos and the like. Nevertheless, the Casey Connor he used to see hide in the bathroom stalls is long gone.

Zeke never gave much thought to Delilah before. Sure, she's easy on the eyes and he had considered her a potential conquest several times, but being in the harsh, unrelenting glare of the limelight like she was and still is wouldn't have been good for business. Their paths never crossed much but he recognises something of a kindred spirit within her. She was jaded before Marybeth; making the school revolve around her was just her way of dealing with it, just like causing anarchy and making money he doesn't need is his. They do it because they can; it's one of the few things in their screwed up lives that they can control.

She loves the attention, of course. She's not stupid to divulge her dreams and crushes and petty secrets to interviewers, but drops hints to potential employers about her passion for running the school newspaper and gushes how exposing Mr. Tate's drinking problem was her way of putting right the education system that fails the students who need it the most. She'll go far.

She's also with Casey now. He thought at first that it was a part of her scheme, hooking up with the new alpha male of Herrington High, but he's seen the way she looks at him sometimes; her hard eyes soften with fondness, and her lips curve slightly in a genuine smile. She's learnt to open her heart again.

He's lost in thought when he catches Casey staring at him, like a puzzle he's trying to crack. He laughs inside, wanting to tell the kid not to bother; he's had 18 years and he can't fucking figure out what makes him tick more than he can grow wings and fly.

Then Stan calls Stokely something puke-inducing, which prompts Delilah to make her gagging face, which sets Casey off into giggles; it makes him smile.

Stokely's transformation is, frankly, shocking. Today she's dressed in a robin's egg blue dress with a pastel pink cardigan; where on fuck she dug these atrocities from he doesn't know, seeing how she's spent most of living memory in nothing but black. Gone also is the prickly exterior; science fiction is suddenly in vogue again, and with Stan on her arm, nobody can accuse her of being a lesbian. It's like everything that made her an outsider suddenly evaporated.

She's still witty and sharp and prone to swear, but her edges have softened somewhat. She's not an outcast anymore and she's not afraid of having people laugh at her for her quirks anymore. They don't, obviously, but even if they did, it wouldn't matter anymore. Saving the world is a trump card to pretty much anything.

Stan has probably changed the least; then again, he never knew Stan very well before this. He was and still is a stand-up guy, if a bit thick. Having escaped jock-dom, his foray into academia is facing obstacles, but Casey and Stokely are more than happy to help out and barring any unexpected setbacks, he looks set to graduate with average marks. His father is unhappy about it, as is the coach, but their objections don't deter the former quarterback.

The point is that everyone has changed. It's as if having the little buggers in their head flipped a switch and showed them exactly where they were going wrong, and once they gained control again, they fixed themselves. He tried, he really did. Joined the football team, lugged himself to school everyday on time, flirted with Ms. Burke, stopped all the illegal stuff…by the end of the first week, he was smoking two packs a day. He tried telling himself that it would take time and that he'd eventually come to an epiphany through it all. He soldiered on in the hope that one day he would come to like it, because he's changed.

The football was the first to go. The rest of the team are as dumb as bricks, he's never suffered fools gladly and he can't see why this has to change just because he had a hand in saving them from aliens. Team games are stupid anyway, because the team is only as strong as its weakest link, and boy did they have weak links. All that charging into one another seems to have inflicted permanent brain damage on the jocks. Once he admitted to himself that he wasn't enjoying it one bit, it became very easy to see the laundry list of issues; the staggering volume of bodily contact, the shrieking coach, the hours. So he quit.

It didn't take long for the pins to fall after that. The effort of waking up on time every morning proved too much after a Wednesday night movie marathon, so he didn't. Homework? Well, he did try. Handed in every single one of Ms. Burke's essays, done to the best of his efforts even though not one challenged him the way proper education was supposed to. Then one day she asks for a paper on the sexual orientation of the Bard and something inside him snaps. All those beautiful plays and poems he wrote, all those insights into human nature, and the only thing people are interested in is who he was boning. So he didn't. It was an act of protest, see? Then one paper led to another and he's back where he started.

Once Zeke stopped with the homework and football and whatnot, it didn't take long for boredom to set in, so when one of his old friends called with an invitation to an all-nighter at his place, he went. When he came back to his place, it was with a girl on either arm, a half-full bottle of Dom in his car and rolls of weed in his back pocket. Because of all the press attention, it was unwise to peddle the leftover stuff like he used to and he wasn't about to go find some junkies to sell it off to like some low-life dealer; in short, it was a challenge.

Some days and 20 packs of camomile tea later, Zeke is suddenly the go-to guy for herbal remedies. His cover is good; his mother has contacts with a pharmaceutical company specialising in naturopathy (true) which is out of town (true) and he's merely acting as a go-between for students not blessed with the freedom he is (somewhat less true). The fact that he's doing the exact same thing he used to hits him when he describes the tea as his "own secret recipe" to Madge the sophomore.

So yeah, he's the same guy, alien invasion or no. It sucks to be so screwed up that even something on a fuck-the-solar-system scale can't change you one bit, and Zeke wonders if anything ever will. Some nights he lies curled up in the couch, lights on, wondering why he should bother going on when it's obvious what his life will be like ten, twenty years down the line. When Casey and Del are high-flyers, living in a New York penthouse and Stan and Stokes get a place in the suburbs with a raft of kids, he'll still be here in this house that his mother just gave him because she couldn't bear to be in it with him, just as broken as he is today.

"Hey, Zeke." Del's voice snaps him out of his reverie. "You comin?"

"Where?"

Casey rolls his eyes. "Told you he wasn't listening. There's a Tim Burton marathon on tonight and we're going to Stan's place to watch it."

"Cool. Count me in."

Well, at least he won't be alone tonight. Before, his nights were spent mostly in the lab, tinkering with shit and talking to Oscar. Now, hell, he's had to get a friggin' calendar to pencil in various play-dates with this bunch. The reconstruction of his lab has been going woefully slow, what with the constant interruptions and all. Before, no one from school ever saw the inside of his place. Precious few people even knew where he lived, but now…he can't show up on their doorstep and whisk them off to SoCal for the summer without warning, apparently, but they think nothing of just barging in whenever. Casey's set up a little darkroom for himself in the attic. Stan invites himself over to bitch when he's argued with Stokely. And Del. She's here so often that he keeps a bag of carrot sticks and yogurt in the fridge, because little miss prissy won't eat chips and whinges better than anyone he knows. One of these days they're going to demand a sleep-over, Zeke's sure of it. He's also sure he'll say yes.

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_C'mon guys, a review would be nice. _


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